Philanthropist Michael Nesmith (yeah, the ex-Monkee) brings five big brains to his New Mexico ranch every two years to solve the world's most pressing problems. And then not tell anyone about it.

By Geoff Edgers

On a high-desert morning soon to be hot as hell, Michael Nesmith - former
Monkee, current philanthropist, and perpetual man-with-a-mission - enters a
cool room just big enough to comfortably hold five brains. Not the organs,
of course, but five live, gifted thinkers, ranging from professor Nikki
Giovanni, one of the few famous living poets with street cred, to Nobel Prize
winner Murray Gell-Mann, the father of quarks.

Nesmith's sandals shuffle quietly as he takes his place at the head of
a conference table. His thinning silvery hair is mussed; his golf shirt
needs tucking in. No matter. He is here this bright morning to give a pep
talk, and the brains listen closely, for good reason. Nesmith, once known
as the "smart Monkee," will soon turn 58, putting him a full 32 years away
from his TV days of knit caps and sideburns. Today, he is a serious grown-up,
an intellectual ringmaster who has given these thinkers $5,000 apiece,
put them up in a snazzy hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and paid their way
to his 7-acre outpost in Nambe, 20 miles to the north. In these parts,
Nesmith is the head wrangler, the foreman of the frontal lobe. And it's
his intention that the brains will cogitate for
the good of humankind - spending 12 hours
in hot debate until they find the answer to
a single, nigh-impossible question: What is the most important issue of
our time?

The name of this biennial exercise, which Nesmith invented and has hosted
since 1990, is the Council on Ideas. It's an oddball gathering of intellectuals
otherwise about as likely to run in the same circles as Jesse Ventura and
Margaret Thatcher. Here, they are nudged into artificial convergence -
a kind of in vitro fertilization whose outcome, if all goes brilliantly,
will be a strong, viable idea that, as Nesmith puts it, "changes everything."

This year, Giovanni and Gell-Mann are joined by Bosnian Serb war crimes
investigator M. Cherif Bassiouni, inveterate advocate of an international
criminal court; anthropologist Anna Roosevelt, great-granddaughter
of Teddy and a MacArthur grant recipient for her work on Amazonian Indians
and the tropics; and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Stanley Karnow,
Vietnam War correspondent and foreign affairs curmudgeon, who was added
at the last minute because novelist Carlos Fuentes took ill.

The Council's goal: one "extraordinary moment" of insight. Unlike bedrock pragmatists, Nez says the value of the idea itself will make ripples.

Once the council begins, only the five brains will be allowed in this room.
I, however, will experience the next best thing. After much wheedling,
Nesmith set aside
his inherent distaste for reporters and agreed to let a select few hear
snippets of council musings through headphones outside the room. And when
the retreat ends,
I alone will watch the meetings on videotape - the most extensive press
access ever granted.

Herein lies the weirdness, at least for people who believe that an idea
without hype is like a bee without buzz. The Council on Ideas seeks the
world's most hot-button issue, but uses no infomercials, billboards, blimps,
or any other forms of advertising
to announce the results. The nonprofit that oversees the council - the
Gihon Foundation - posts bios of council wonks and full texts of their
"position statements" on its Web site
(www.gihon.com).
Period. The only other nod to the information age is a meager press conference
tacked on at the council's end, mostly because Nesmith - Nez, to his friends
- thought the brains would focus better if they knew public scrutiny loomed.
Beyond that, Nez prefers the cocklebur method of IT: Have host, will travel.

He's heard the snickers. What's the point
of identifying the most important issue of our time if you don't let anyone
know about it? Why pay attention to a man known mostly for his dry wit
and facial hair?

The news media, it's true, sticks to Nesmith's Monkee-ness like gum on
a go-go boot. Never mind that Nez helped invent MTV and country rock, that
he published a novel and pioneered a home-video distribution business, and
that he cut 13 post-Monkees albums and produced cult film classics like
Repo Man. And never mind that Nesmith - who could choose to be as
ostentatious and narcissistic as the next gazillionaire rock star - instead
carries on the philanthropic traditions of his mother, Bette Graham, the
inventor of Liquid Paper typing-correction fluid.

Nope. Except for the mom bit, reporters don't care about Nesmith's real
accomplishments. Give the press entrée, and what do they ask? Whether
Nesmith still talks to ex-simians Davy Jones, Peter Tork, and Micky Dolenz.
And who needs another pun headline? "Nesmith's Not Monkee-ing Around."
"Hey! Hey! Ex-Monkee Is Also a Novelist."

Hey, hey. The brains are waiting.

"I have no idea whether you can do this," Nesmith tells them flatly. He
warns that they'll bicker and possibly even brawl. Two brains in the 1990
council argued so bitterly about Fidel Castro, he says, that the entire
group walked out. He encourages them to start with easy ideas ("It may
be something as simple as 'be kind to animals' or 'ripe fruit is best'")
and work up to the hard stuff.

"This idea - that five people of your
caliber and your degree of thought would agree on something - is significant,"
he says, inspiring the brains to be all they can be. "What is important,"
he concludes, "is that you try."

The road to Nambe, population 1,246, cuts through Pojoaque Pueblo, past
a turnoff for the Los Alamos National Laboratory and a casino where Chubby
Checker is playing. A few miles down a twisting dirt road off the highway,
Casa Nez sits against a backdrop of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I arrive
on Friday morning, well ahead of the council's evening kickoff reception,
to get a jump on the brains.

Geoff Edgers (gedge1@ix.netcom.com) , a staff reporter for The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, has written for Spin and Salon.